Final Chapters

I’ve drafted how Distances ends. Yesterday, I wrote its last chapter. After I’d done so, I took a short Wiltshire walk:

Wiltshire countryside. [Photo by me, 2015.]

I needed one because writing it upset me. I had to get away from my computer for a while. Which I’m sure you’re surprised to learn given this lighthearted excerpt?:

A paragraph in the final chapter. [By me, 2015.]

I’m not giving away which character is thinking that, where that is thought, or in what context. No way. Wild horses couldn’t drag it out of me. 😉

I’d had a good idea of how I’d wanted to end it. It was in general terms in the outline. Now, it’s written out fully.

What’s interesting (to me anyway) is as I think on it now I didn’t do it quite this way with Frontiers. The final chapter in that book was not going to be the final one. Although meant for near the end, it was going to appear a chapter or two before. (The first book, Passports, had ended pretty much as I had outlined it.)

However, dissatisfied with its end, after I shifted that chapter back to turn it into the end I felt its placement there much better reflected the conclusion in terms of the overall spirit of the tale as I had envisioned it. I also felt that if I was never able to write another line about all of these people, the story could have “neatly” finished there. So I went with that change and consider it one of the best snap writing decisions I’ve ever made.

Now, I plunge on to fill in the remainder that happens before, but completion is many months down the writing road. Time for more coffee. Have a good day. 🙂